Blue Ridge responds

Blue Ridge Communications on May 9 provided the following statement in response to the Courier’s March 14 story about Dingman resident John Dyczko’s claim that Blue Ridge refused to provide service to a home Dyczko planned to buy, even after Dyczko offered to pay an installation construction cost estimate of $50,000. Dyczko said he dropped plans to buy the house because he could not get cable service needed for his business. To the editor: In November of 2006, Blue Ridge Communications received a request for service from a potential customer for cable service to his new home. Unfortunately, providing service to the home was a complex matter. Cable companies have to attach their cable lines to poles owned by power or phone companies. There are rules and regulations from the National Electrical Code as to where the cable lines are placed on the poles and how far the wires need to be from the phone wires and electric wires. In this situation, there was no room for the cable wires to be attached. When this occurs, the cable company has to pay the respective utilities to make room on the poles or have new poles installed to make room for the cable service. In this unique and rather unusual situation, there was nearly $50,000 in expenses that Blue Ridge would have to incur to provide service to this home. The fee that would have been quoted to provide service was for these expenses. If the potential customer would have agreed to pay this expenses, a contract would have been sent for signature, and the construction process would have begun. According to Blue Ridge records, no contract was requested or sent. If the customer had signed the contract, we would have proceeded with the construction, The recent Pike County Courier article also suggested that Blue Ridge received calls from the Governors office regarding this issue. After an exhaustive inquiry with all employees who would have taken the call, we have no record of being contacted by the Governors office on this matter. Blue Ridge Communications is fully dedicated to providing state of the art service to the municipalities it serves, and to as many residents as possible. Robert Miller, Blue Ridge Communications